Elon Musk To Unveil Solar Roof With Storage, Charger Next Month (bloomberg.com)

Elon Musk plans to unveil Tesla and SolarCity's new solar roof product, which will come integrated with version 2.0 of the Tesla's PowerWall solar storage battery for the home, as well as a Tesla car charger, he said today. Bloomberg adds: Billionaire Elon Musk, the chairman and the largest shareholder of both Tesla and SolarCity Corp., announced his plans to unveil the new product in a message on Twitter Thursday. SolarCity's board agreed to Tesla's offer to buy the biggest U.S. rooftop solar supplier on Aug. 1. The product fits into his long-term vision of helping provide green homes that run on solar energy and use battery storage to help power systems, including charging electric cars, even after sundown. He announced in August that SolarCity is developing a "solar roof," a roofing product that incorporates solar technology without using standard photovoltaic panels.

Comments

Wot?

[nospam007]

"a roofing product that incorporates solar technology without using standard photovoltaic panels."

Since I can't possibly RTFA, what technology does it use if not solar panels?

Re:Wot?

[MachineShedFred]

It's shingles that incorporate PV cells.

So, instead of panels sitting over shingles, it's just the shingles.

Re:Wot?

[crow]

Standard panels are mounted over the top of standard roofing shingles, often with a small air gap. There have been some solar shingle products in the past where special photovoltaic shingles are used instead of asphalt shingles. The problems include that they're much more expensive, much less efficient, and must more labor intensive to install. From the sound of the hype, I'm expecting a new product that overcomes all three of those shortfalls.

Re:Wot?

[MachineShedFred]

Well, it's more for prospective installs where someone says "I can't do solar because my roof is shit, and I can't put panels over a shitty roof."

Now, when you're replacing the shitty roof, you put these on instead. That's the idea here.

Re:Wot?

[ShanghaiBill]

It's shingles that incorporate PV cells.

Here is a better article with a picture of the panels.

Re:Wot?

[SolemnLord]

Is there any particular reason these shingles are less efficient? The only reasons I can think of being less efficient are because 1. they inevitably have less area than mounted panels, and capture less power and 2. they're reliant on the angle of the roof, meaning less-than-ideal positioning. But are they actually different in any other respects?

For what it's worth I'm basically envisioning shingles with smaller PV panels in the center of them.

Re:Wot?

[The-Ixian]

You can ignore the hell out of this. It is, after all, the American Way.

Re:Wot?

[sexconker]

I had shingles. I don't recommend it. It hurts and the damage can potentially be permanent.

Re:Wot?

[crow]

No, there's no good reason for the solar shingles to use inferior PV cells, but they do. The shingle design is bad because they're much smaller than a typical panel, requiring much more wiring for a given surface area.

I'm guessing that they'll have something that mimics a metal roof more than a shingle roof, but we'll find out soon enough.

What would be absolutely revolutionary would be something that is self-healing, such that roofers can drive nails through it, cut holes in it, etc., and have it still work. Just roll out sheets of it over the wood, nail it down, and hook up wires at the top (running down through the attic to the side of the house). I don't think we're going to see that anytime soon.

Re: Wot?

[Anonymous Coward]

They were demonstrating this technology back in the 1990's. There were plans to make solar panels fit over windows, act like verandahs, or be built into South facing walls.

Sometimes it's not just the idea, but the technology, price and convenience have to reach convergence.

Like tablets. For years I read comments on Slashdot saying tablets would never be useful or practical, and they weren't... until they were.

Now commenters point to products like the Newton and say, 'tablets are nothing new, we had this technology back in the 90's'.

Re:Wot?

[WillAffleckUW]

We do have solar PV film being developed here at the UW, but we only have it running around 8-10 percent efficiency and we need to scale up the process so the costs are closer to traditional solar panels. They do have the advantage you mention of continuing to work even after you drive nails through them, or sustaining minor storm damage. With traditional PV solar roof panels, damage to a panel drops output dramatically, leading to replacement.

Re:Wot?

[minogully]

Those panels pictured aren't a Tesla/Solar City invention. Those are solar shingles created by another company. Their image is used as speculation on what Tesla's solar roof might look like. Electric does this kind of thing a lot.

It does not mean that Tesla's solar roof will look anything like this.

Re:Wot?

[thinkwaitfast]

A 2000sqft house covered in solar panels will generate 73kwh/day in 4 hours. Is efficiency that big of a concern?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...

Re: Wot?

[WindBourne]

No, it is NOT shingles. Those ideas are majorly fucked. This will replace the plywood, tar paper/sheathing, AND shingle/metal/tiles. This will cut the labor costs by 2/3. In addition, it should by stronger than current roof, assuming they build it the way I heard.

Re:Focus Diversion

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries exploding? These aren't some micro batteries pumped off of an assembly line by the millions with little to no testing like a phone or subject to the abuse that road going batteries have to deal with on a daily basis (debris, shock, heat, etc). And even cars have only encountered a handful of fires, most of those appear to have been due to outside sources (mis-wired chargers, debris on the road, crashes, etc).

Re:Sounds great, but probably only for the 1%

[AK Marc]

In time metered locations, you can use the battery without the solar. Buy cheaper energy, then use it at peak times, stored for your cost savings.